Purple Television

[March 24 2017] : art

M. O. M. by Eartheater

“M.O.M.” (Matter Over Mind) is driven by the body, the work unfolded from matter rather than mind. During a month long residency at Otion Front Studio, Eartheater (Alexandra Drewchin) created a 45 minute performance, an original album, and an artist book (soon to be released) all born out of organic movement. This video provides a condensed version of the performance with two tracks “Bitchwave” and “Teen Mom Earth”. Below is the introduction from the book of poetry in body language:

“At times of nervous pressure in performance, my clambering thoughts are what fail me – not my body. My nervous cognition is overly active and short circuits as it peels away from my body’s awareness. The less I’m in my thoughts, the more aware I become in my modulating form. Matter Over Mind is how I disengage the feedback loop of my cortisol triggering cognition by pivoting from thought to shape. Adjusting my shape changes my mind. M.O.M. is my synesthetic song of shape. I cannot escape the sound of my body’s boundaries. It’s never silent. Even in prolonged stillness, my form is always emitting information, no matter how subtle. While shape is more integral than the spoken or written word, it speaks profoundly in waves of varying frequency. Without the senses of sight and hearing, shape can even communicate on the highest intellectual level. Helen Keller communicated and comprehended precisely through shape and touch alone. Indeed, we can make poetry by exploring and morphing shape. However, people continue to fill the same predictable shapes every day. What’s increasingly vexing is that the world is rapidly becoming a place where many of us do not change shape at all. That’s why we can’t help double tapping on content of sweaty shirtless hard core kids flexing like scorpions, or Fluct performances, because the body yearns to experience ecstatic shape but increasingly does so only vicariously. As culture is propelled by the internet, bodies get left behind collecting webbed tensions from moments of spiked cortisol production and other chemical clutter. Glands ready to release cleansing and stimulating hormones into the bloodstream await the shape’s full expression.” – Eartheater